Comment by mrcwinn
15 days ago
You cannot acknowledge the existence of a request by the UK. You cannot tell users you implemented the proposed system. And you must do all of this to citizens who have no representation in your system, without the consent of their governments.
It all begs the question, what else have they requested, and of those which requests were accepted secretly?
Truly a pathetic example of a democracy.
There is only one way to respond to this. You just do not comply with this. If you are Apple you withdraw from the UK completely if necessary. But a better option is probably to just take the punishment for not complying while you appeal. The cost will be large regardless. But the reputational damage if Apple complies seems it will be larger than both the fine for noncompliance or the cost of losing all business in a large market like the UK.
I think Apple has a very short window for a powerful response here. It should be re-using the famous Pirate Bay wording for maximum effect.
> You just do not comply with this. If you are Apple you withdraw from the UK completely if necessary
But Apple has a massive history of complying with government data requests all over the world. They care not for user privacy one bit, and so this request is not that unusual for them.